Workers' Liberty, No. 62

This is an interesting addition to the Archive from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, a group established by Sean Matgamna, after he had left the Revolutionary Socialist League (later Militant). He first founded Workers’ Fight, which then joined as a faction within the International Socialists. In 1971 the group around Matgamna reformed as Workers’ Fight and later fused with Workers Power to form the International-Communist League. In 1981 the ICL fused the Workers’ Socialist League. Subsequently the WSL split. However the ICL had through its paper Socialist Organiser made connections on the left of the Labour Party (and for a while was close to Ken Livingstone and others) and organised as the Socialist Organiser Alliance. By the early 1990s the paper was proscribed by the Labour Party and the SOA retired and replaced by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty which organised in a range of areas on campaigns. The AWL has adopted some heterodox positions relative to much of the rest of the further left. Although campaigning for Labour the NEC of that party called for the AWL to be proscribed in early 2022.

This edition of Workers’ Liberty dates from 2000 and has a very wide range of topics covered. These include a significant section on Ken Livingstone, the issue of asylum rights, Russian workers taking on mafia-capitalists, the poll-tax, columns on the British Labour Party, a piece by Matgamna on the Balkans war, another piece on Tony Cliff’s attitude to Max Shachtman and a column optimistically entitled ’Teach yourself Marx’s Capital’ which in this edition examines ‘the roots of class struggle’. There’s also reviews, an interesting back and forth on genetics and a piece on ‘How I became a socialist’ where Lee Sergent described ‘From Tory to Trot!’.

With respect to Ireland there is an article that examines the Peace Process – ‘A big blow for the “Peace Process”’. It argues:

At the Ulster Unionist Coun­cil meeting on 25 March, David Trimble defeated his leadership opponent, the Rev­erend Martin Smyth. The margin was 457-348, giving Trimble 57% of the vote to Smyth’s

43%: clear, but nei­ther comfortable nor decisive. Scarcely less Impor­tant for the future of the Good Friday

Agreement, the Council voted 384-338 that there will be no future power­ sharing without prior Provisional IRA disarmament, and no Unionist involvement in government unless Brilish policy is reversed and the RUC allowed to retain its name and its traditional Unionist insignia. Trimble’s legs as well as his hands are tied. Adhered to rigidly, this alone could wreck any chance of fur­ther progress in the current peace process.

It also notes:

The RUC reforms proposed by the Patten Commission upset many Unionists – largely because they were seen as insulting to a force which had defended them from “ter­rorism” – but were seen as tokenist and inadequate by most nationalists. They are a raw emotional platform on which to rebuild Protestant com­munal militancy.

The column makes an interesting point which has certain ramifications at this remove:

For all that, we should not exaggerate the importance of these developments. They don’t alter the central fact that Unionism, and Protestant politics generally, are not today what they once were. A strik­ing feature of this latest revolt, for example, Is the failure of the anti­ Agreement forces to grow significantly.

One point from the editorial on the cover story is also notable:

…the union leaders may, and many of the rank and file certainly will, benefit from the shock of Livingstone’s defec­tion (and from the experience of Dennis Canavan in Scotland, who stood against the Blairites and won a seat in the Scottish Parliament). Above all, a Livingstone victory will demystify Blairism for those in the Labour Party and the trade unions who are unhappy with it but have been hypnotised by its “suc­cess” and “power”. Blair is onJy unbeatable as long as the labour movement, whose party Blair and his careerist groupies have hijacked, do not fight back. The “great” Mister Blair appears great only because the labour movement has for so long – since Thatcher’s victories over the working class – been on its knees!

We must popularise the idea that, faced with New Labour, the working class movement needs once again to fight to win labour representation in Parliament and put the argu­ments for socialism. Here it is not Livingstone’s Mayoral campaign that is important, but the activities of the LSA. In office, Livingstone can bring only disappointment and disillu­sion to those who now naively back him as a “left” candidate: to such people the LSA in the election offers serious working ­class politics.

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